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“Nicolás Maduro �sobre baño de sangre” �(audio)

GODDS: Global Online Deepfake Detection System

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Marco Postiglione

V.S. Subrahmanian

Northwestern University

vss@northwestern.edu

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SUBMISSION DETAILS

  • Subject
    • Nicolás Maduro
  • Modality
    • Audio
  • Title
    • "Nicolás Maduro sobre baño de sangre"
  • Content
    • The audio is alleged to contain the voice of Venezuelan politician Nicolás Maduro discussing how he plans to kill many Venezuelans to scare the population from protesting against him.

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vss@northwestern.edu

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SUBMISSION DETAILS CONT.

  • Original Audio Transcript

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 "Lo fusilan. Nadie tiene el derecho a protestar en Venezuela. Y si va preso? Me lo torturan. Le parten las piernas. Que más nunca pueda protestar ante mí. El que mate a más muchachos de esos le doy más dinero. Y una casa. Yo no me voy por las malas y menos por unas elecciones sin importancia. Aquí mando. Soy yo. Quiero que maten bastante gente. Yo prometí un baño de sangre y eso es lo que les voy a dar a todos los que se me alzo. Ya llevamos varios muertos. Cuando vean unos 20 más, se asustan y no protestan más. Viva Chávez! Y la revolución!"

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  • Audio Translation

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 "They execute him. No one has the right to protest in Venezuela. And if he goes to jail? They torture him. They break his legs. So that he can never protest against me again. The one who kills the most of those kids, I give more money. And a house. I won't leave by force and even less by some unimportant elections. I am in charge. It's me. I want them to kill a lot of people. I promised a bloodbath and that is what I am going to give to all those who rise against me. We already have several dead. When they see about 20 more, they get scared and don’t protest anymore. Long live Chávez! And the revolution!"

vss@northwestern.edu

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AUTOMATED + HUMAN ANALYSIS

  • The audio was analyzed by seven deepfake detection algorithms to predict whether it is more likely to be real or more likely to be fake.

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  • Two analysts trained to detect deepfakes analyzed the media and contextual information to determine AI-specific manipulations.

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vss@northwestern.edu

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AUTOMATED PREDICTIVE MODEL + HUMAN ANALYSIS

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  • 6 out of 7 predictive models said that the audio is likely to be fake with a probability below 0.5
    • The precision of these models when identifying real audio samples is between .71 and .93
  • 1 out of 7 predictive models said the audio is likely to be fake with probability higher than 0.5
    • The precision of this model when identifying fake audio samples is .93

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  • There is a lack of consensus about whether this audio is authentic. This might be caused by the language of the audio and the significant amount of background noise.

vss@northwestern.edu

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HUMAN ANALYSIS

  • There are several indicators that the media might have been digitally manipulated:
    • Nicolás Maduro's voice is clear, despite heavy background noise. This could indicate that the background noise and the subject's speaking clips may have been obtained separately and then combined.
    • Maduro's voice in this clip lacks normal cadence and vocal inflections that naturally occur when a person is speaking, potentially indicating that this clip is inauthentic.

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vss@northwestern.edu

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CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS

  • There are several contextual indicators that the media has been digitally manipulated:
    • This audio appears to have been sourced from a TikTok uploaded by @policriticotik; this video has been analyzed by several fact-checking websites and deemed AI-manipulated media
      • RTVE
      • Efecto Cocuyo
    • This video used by this account is taken from a real X post shared by Maduro with its original audio removed, heavily suggesting that AI-generated audio was overlayed over the video with editing software

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CONCLUSION

  • We believe this audio is likely to be fake.

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vss@northwestern.edu